Monday, February 23, 2009

US$8billion dollar fraud by United State banker, Allen Stanford. The scam is widely perceived as Allen Stanford utilising the ill-regulated offshore banking industry in Antigua.

Stanford financial group has allegedly offerred US$8bilion worth of certificates of deposits that promised unreasonably high interest rate. CAS Hewlett, Antigua-based accountancy firm is the auditor. Unfortunately, the where-about of the chief executive is unknown.

CAS Hewlett gave unqualified audit opinion to the statutory account of Stanford.

Nevertheless, what regulators concern are the representation of the bank, as quoted below:

'The defendants have misrepresented to CD purchasers that their deposits are safe, falsely claiming that the bank re-invests client funds primarily in 'liquid' financial instruments (the portfolio); monitors the portfolio through a team of 20-plus analysts; and is subject to yearly audits by Antiguan regulators.'

Sunday, February 8, 2009

The objective of IAS 36 is to ensure that the Company's assets are carried at no more than their recoverable amount. An asset is carried at more than its recoverable amount if its carrying amount exceeds the amounts to be recovered through use or sales of the asset. If the carrying amount > recoverable amount, the asset have to be impaired.

IAS 36 is considered extremely for financial statement users. Let's illustrate a scenario where no Company does not apply IAS 36 appropriately.

Company ABC have recorded a few machineries in its accounting books for the year ended 31 Dec 2008. However, due to excessive usage of the machineries & improper maintenance, the machineries are at the end of its life cycle with approximately nil value. Company ABC is going to scrap off the machineries in one month time. However, in the book, the Machineries have a net book value of US$1million.

A few investors are in the process of taking over Company ABC. While reviewing the Company ABC's financial statement, they are more than happy to find out that the Company has US$1million worth of machineries on hand. As such, they are willing to pay another US$1million on top of the initial offer price!

If IAS 36 has been applied appropriately, the Company should have impaired the Machineries to its recoverable amount. Investors would not have paid another US$1mil for the end-of-life machineries. Hence, it is important to carry out proper impairment testing for significant assets on the Company's books.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Before the spread of credit crunch, company's investment in money market funds are, in normal circumstances, classified as cash & cash equivalence. The classification is in view of the feature of high liquidity and easily/ readily convertible to known amount of cash.

However, the classifications above need to be challenge. We need to re-consider if the money market funds in current climate continue to meet the criteria of classified as cash & cash equivalence, by considering the following factors:

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